Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

The last stretch of EW was weak because all emotional pull is rendered null because of the established macguffin.

Honestly, I was taken out of the plot of the final zone when you get there and Thancred is dead and literally no one cares except for a few lines from Urianger. Like, goddamn.

The fact that literally all of the Scions die in this moment just only served to hammer in how temporary it was going to be, especially when Y'shtola, notorious plot armor wearer that she is, outright says "By the way, your plot device can probably bring us back. But don't do it at the end of this zone. ", which is later followed by Alphinaud making a similar remark!

Also, it's really weird to me that G'raha has this really great speech to the Omicron guy about helping him see through his malaise and feelings of being unable to move on, while Y'shtola and Estinien are kinda just like "Ehh, who cares?" to the people they talk to, which somehow still fixes things.

[Recon1o6]

-Reaper and sage are nowehere near as awesome as people make them out to be
-The low end of the playerbase is too lazy and having certain duties be gatekeepers for skill/effort levels would be good for the game
-the job team,, battle design team and a lot of the savage/ultimate raiding parts of the playerbase has an unhealthy obsession with balance, scripted perfection and dps over everything else
-Dungeons suck and always have done bar a handful of exceptions
-Hrothgar should not have been designed until viera were completed
-SE needs some fresh blood in some of its teams focused on adding content, challenge and mechanics rather than trimming/simplifying/nerfing

and now for the big one

yoshida is not as good as people make him out to be

[Saraide]

People who think that 'main character death = well made story' and 'no main character death = garbage story' (I am including the rest of the scions in this main character category) need to acknowledge that game of thrones is not the end all of story writing.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

StB was the best expansion for overall gameplay. Don’t @me

I actually am surprised by how Stormblood MSQ was kinda meh for me, but I found myself enjoying a lot of the side content, while Shadowbringers was the reverse.

I disliked all of (EW)'s trial music.

This reminds me of something: I don't really care for the Phase 1 music of the final boss theme of Endwalker. It feels like a "final boss theme compilation" rather than a song that actually fits a fight against Meteion. I've seen some people say "Well, Gaius is on our side now and we got here with Estinien's help and Zenos and Emet-Selch helped us in this zone", and that's well and good, but this is Meteion's fight. Imagine if Hades' final boss theme was just a mash-up of Shadowbringers area themes to convey all of the people we helped on the way there. I'd prefer something that actually spoke of Meteion as a character as opposed to "Remember all of these things?". Also, if it was going to be a compilation final boss theme, why isn't Rise of the White Raven in there?

The Phase 2 music is fine, though, I think, but that's more of the Warrior of Light's second wind music.

[einschwartz]

Droopy ears on Viera is the best type of ears!!!

[Remish]

Super-Hot Take: Mentor hate is over exaggerated, and the community makes mentors seem worse than they really are. They also put incredibly unrealistic expectations upon mentors in an unpaid volunteered role. I feel like a lot mentor hate is falsely bias opinions influencing each other and because we act like mentor hate is "The cool thing to do". I see it more as people wanting to take part in schadenfreude and insult people in any way they can think of solely because they do not like them as a person. Are there bad mentors? Absolutely. There are bad sprouts to but this is always overlooked, ignored, even excused and treated as a non-issue just because they aren't the one with a crown. I find new players are often conditioned to hate mentors' way before they know what a mentor is and taught that they aren't doing their "job" by their friends and peers because its a meme to hate.

PS: There is also always this weird mentality of people pointing out sprouts make better mentors than mentors do on occasion but fail to realize that it could be a mentor on an alt. If a sprout knows the game better than the mentor does, then I find it highly probable that they are infact a mentor on an alt. I can't imagine a genuine true sprout that is knowledgeable of the game's inner mechanisms and knowingly and willfully being in the Novice Network if they weren't there to be a mentor in the first place. Yet somehow nobody in the community ever seems to consider this possibility when they start to insult mentors.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

People who think that 'main character death = well made story' and 'no main character death = garbage story' (I am including the rest of the scions in this main character category) need to acknowledge that game of thrones is not the end all of story writing.

Personally, I feel like you don't need character death to tell a good story. At the same time, I feel like XIV has this very noteworthy habit where it 'kills' its characters, only to be like "Oh, just kidding, they're still alive" a while later. Sometimes the execution is a bit odd, like Thancred seemingly falling over dead after the fight with Ran'jit only to be fine five minutes later, but I get the idea that was being gone for there: if Thancred dies, that kind of distracts from Ryne's decision in the moment, and she'd probably lose a lot of confidence over the fact that he just died on the way to her making her choice. Additionally, almost dying and not saying what he needed to put things into perspective and that's why he opens up to Ryne a lot more after that moment. I might find the way the scene played out a little odd, but I think the idea behind it is fine enough.

But then you have other moments where it feels a bit awkward.

I didn't want Nanamo to die at the end of ARR, for example. She looks like she's suffering immensely and she'd be dying at the fairly young age of 21 to boot. But when ARR ends with her poisoned and choking to death onscreen because of political backstabbing and tries to use this as a moment that has a lot of weight (fueling the Warrior of Light's inner Dark Knight, messing up Thancred's aether permanently, making Y'shtola blind, actually killing off Minfilia, setting up the events that lead to Shinryu, etc.), only to then go "Oh, no, actually she was still alive and the Scions weren't going to be accused of any wrongdoing. It was all just a wacky misunderstanding that got out of hand when Raubahn decided to cut a guy in half, haha.", that's when I start to get annoyed.

Super-Hot Take: Mentor hate is over exaggerated, and the community makes mentors seem worse than they really are. They also put incredibly unrealistic expectations upon mentors in an unpaid volunteered role. I feel like a lot mentor hate is falsely bias opinions influencing each other and because we act like mentor hate is "The cool thing to do". I see it more as people wanting to take part in schadenfreude and insult people in any way they can think of solely because they do not like them as a person. Are there bad mentors? Absolutely. There are bad sprouts to but this is always overlooked, ignored, even excused and treated as a non-issue just because they aren't the one with a crown. I find new players are often conditioned to hate mentors' way before they know what a mentor is and taught that they aren't doing their "job" by their friends and peers because its a meme to hate.

Agreed. Especially when a lot of people in XIV seem to get really huffy if you try to give advice in general.

[drtasteyummy]

Super-Hot Take: Mentor hate is over exaggerated, and the community makes mentors seem worse than they really are. They also put incredibly unrealistic expectations upon mentors in an unpaid volunteered role. I feel like a lot mentor hate is falsely bias opinions influencing each other and because we act like mentor hate is "The cool thing to do". I see it more as people wanting to take part in schadenfreude and insult people in any way they can think of solely because they do not like them as a person. Are there bad mentors? Absolutely. There are bad sprouts to but this is always overlooked, ignored, even excused and treated as a non-issue just because they aren't the one with a crown.

The design is flawed, first of all the fact that you get a crown and rewards just makes it so people farm it to feel cool about it, secondly you don't do anything you just play at a decent level or tank and people will upvote you it's not like you were really helpful or a MENTOR you could literally exchange it for the word "experienced".

[sharknado]

Super-Hot Take: Mentor hate is over exaggerated.

Isn't just the same as popotoes and Lalafell?

[Liam_Harper]

WHM is the worst healer to pick up for someone new to healing.